Together with Hélène Martinez (Giessen) and Frank. G. Königs (Marburg) I am currently preparing a handbook (in German) on methods of foreign language learning.

In an attempt to provide a systematic, scientific overview of forms and ways of learning and working, we have undertaken this demanding project for two major reasons: On the one hand, it has become increasingly difficult to keep track of the various methodological developments in the language-specific foreign language pedagogies. This is why we have designed a handbook across languages in order to communicate the state of the art between and ascross the individual language didactics.

The second reason is of a rather critical nature: We believe that methods and procedures may easily become an end in themselves. The handbook intends to assign the methods their appropriate place in the language classroom: They are ways and procedures of language learning, but not its purpose and goal.

Ideally, methods are not arbitrarily chosen, but they are, one way or other, coupled with the contents and the objects of language learning. Such a functional understanding of methods guarantees best that the learning and working methods really motivate the students.

We are currently entering the stage of creating the print proofs and the page layout with our editor and Klett Kallmeyer Verlag. Quite exciting, but also quite a bit of work. We hope to have the book out in autumn.